I am a 28-year-old woman who lives in Seattle, Washington. I am a writer and artist for love and a documentation production specialist for money. I was born and grew up in San Jose, CA, and spent four years in Iowa getting my degree in linguistics. I keep a Web journal called The New Zero; you can find out more about who I am and what I do with myself there.

This is a wellness journal, created because I needed somewhere to record my progress and my fustrations as I go through the process of eating better, getting in shape, and getting my emotonal house in order. While I may be focused on diet and exercise for a while, I'm hopig that this weblog will eventually encompass all of the things I'm doing in my life to feel better and get healthier.

I was actually a very skinny child, until I came down with autoimmune thyroid disease (also known as Hashimoto's thyroiditis) when I was 10. Since then, I have always been overweight--sometimes by as much as 100 pounds. The thyroid disease hit me with a triple whammy--it slowed my metabolism so what I ate would stick around, made me extremely tired so exercise was close to impossible, and caused a major depression that would plague me for 14 years.

I also have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is usually caused by insulin resistance. Between my PCOS and the thyroid condition, I have a body that will never be metabolically normal.

Fortunately, there is a light at the end of the tunnel--I now have the best medical care of my life, both my thyroid condition and my PCOS are under control (treating the thyroid with Synthroid and Cytomel, and my case of PCOS turned out to be responsive to spironolactone, which is an androgen blocker and improves sensitivity to insulin). My depression turned out to have been caused entirely by my thyroid disease. Good health care, though incredibly important, isn't enough to really make me feel better--with chronic illnesses, often it's self-care that makes all the difference. So in January, I decided to commit myself to regular exercise, and in March I started eating a low-carb diet. As of 6.25.03, I have lost about 37 pounds.

The title picture is of a salmonberry blossom, taken on the Quartz Creek trail by yours truly.